wco81

According to the Wikipedia entry, the fatality rate was 9.6% in China and HK.

Dang, do I need to get those masks for my trip next month to HK and Thailand?

Maybe goggles too.

Jiatong

Was abet amazed that the 'virus' story was front page of tuesday's english China Daily. usually it's the ++ on promoting China articles.

trueblu

This definitely represents a jump from one animal species to human. These 'jumps' are incredibly rare, and probably represent some random 'gain of function' mutation that allows the virus to now infect a new species by just a small number of virions. All of these 'outbreaks' therefore can usually be traced back to a single point. If the virus now gains further mutations thal allow it to become a bona fide human pathogen, then ongoing human-human transmission maintains it in the human population: this happened with HIV, which almost certainly represents a single 'chimpanzee to human' event about a 100 years ago. Other viruses, e.g. bird flu, have so far not been able to sustain ongoing human-human transmission, so there are sporadic cases from time to time. SARS was an intermediate case: reasonable sustained human-human transmission, but due to massive global response, all human cases were isolated (or resulted in death without ongoing transmission), which eventually resulted in cessation of human disease. 2019-nCoV is essentially SARSv2.0. So far, it has both lower pathogenesis and lower human to human transmission potential...but it's very early days yet.

tb

kbooks66

Wow, I was really lucky to leave China when I did. I was in china bout a month-ish ago, right before the outbreak. While I didn't travel to Wuhan, I got really sick with flu-like symptoms while I was there, and I was definitely running a fever when I went through the airport.

anacapamalibu

Got jammed up at HKG in May 09 after Canton fair.. swine flu epidemic. Had fever..dipped in to restroom bag of ice to head. All good. I think it was from snake hot pot in Guangzhou.

jiejie

That was an overall mortality rate for SARS. But overall is very misleading. For reasons not fully explained, the mortality rate vastly increased with age. If you were young, under 25, and were diagnosed with SARS, your chances of survival were outstanding (<1% mortality rate). But age 65+, chances not so good, 50% mortality rate. That's sobering. I would postulate that since this new virus is structured very similarly to SARS virus, that we are likely to see mortality rates that rise with age groups....even if the exact mortality rate percentages end up not being the same as with SARS.

Potential lesson: prospective visitors to China in the age 50+ category might want to be especially thoughtful when making a decision on whether to travel now.

expert7700

CNN reports US CBP and Centers for Disease control is now insisting that passengers from Wuhan to the United States, whether on direct or indirect flights, will only be allowed to land at one of the five US airports doing health screenings (JFK/ORD/LAX/SFO/ATL).

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/21/healt...-bn/index.html

What flight routings exist that would cause passengers to be involuntarily denied boarding or rerouted? I assume even multi-carrier routings are affected if on the same ticket.

// I've never drank a Corona beer, so am I safe from the Corona Virus

OSSYULYYZ

DFW, NRT/HND, HNL, HKG etc?

trueblu

Completely agree...and most of the confirmed deaths so far have been in elderly.

The actual case fatality rates are always an over-estimate anyway, since many people will be asymptomatic or so mildly symptomatic, they will not come to medical attention. The rates represent case-fatality of moderate-severe symptomatic and confirmed/ highly suspected cases. Having said that, the case-fatality thus far appears to be about 2%, which may be an under-estimate due to 'lag' (i.e. severely ill patients who won't recover who are not dead yet in an ongoing real-time outbreak), which is within the same ball-park as SARS and way, way higher than e.g. seasonal influenza.

Reading today that the Wuhan authorities chose not to clamp down on this in early January (when I went on TV to say the authorities were doing so much better than SARS!!! -- oops!) because it would have been a hassle to reschedule a Hubei political meeting. Not only embarassing for the govnt, but may have let the cat out of the bag in terms of the potential for spreading throughout China.

Since the incubation period (if SARS is anything to go by) is up to 14 days, that means that e.g. if Wuhan university students and migrant workers had been infected in sizeable numbers before they went home in the last 10 days, we may see a spike in the next week all over China, AND, a subsequent second, much bigger spike 1-2 weeks later..that will be really, really bad.

I'm not too pessimistic that this will be worse than SARS. BUT, although public health measures are much better than 17 years ago, the mass migration and mobility of the population has also increased dramatically. In 2003, >60% of the (much smaller) population was rural and not mobile, it's now less than 40%. That represents 300 million people that are more likely to be moving in and out of cities...

tb

percysmith

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...0b1_story.html

trueblu

Wow...this "Federal officials will also direct travelers arriving in the United States on direct and indirect flights from Wuhan to those five airports for screening. That process is being worked out in the coming days. For example, if a passenger was originally to fly from Wuhan to Shanghai and then Boston, that flight would most likely be rerouted to JFK for screening, and then proceed to Boston, CDC officials said." sounds insane, and I'm not sure what it means...they will re-route _the entire flight_, i.e. 300 people with an origin in SH, on account of not wanting to screen one person in BOS??

This could get crazy very quickly...

I'm not entirely sure how they will know where people are coming from anyway. Whenever I fill out my API, it just wants country of residence, but my precise destination address, not the other way around.

tb

MSPeconomist

Some airports in Asia seem to monitor temperatures of all international passengers all the time. In some cases, you walk through a gate with a series of one way automatic doors.

I remember a story in the news about an American group held in quarantine in Hong Kong for close to two weeks. It must have been during the swine flu epidemic as it was later than SARS. IIRC it was a bunch of high school students who had planned reasonably upscale travel, but were instead stuck in some place (other than the hotel they had booked) that seemed terrible, boring and with no decent food options. It sounded like one of the Mong Kok Mansions places or whatever they're called on that tacky street behind the Peninsula.

expert7700

Easier if they deny boarding on inbound flights to the US.

Data could come from multiple places, some voluntary and some less voluntary (automated capture by .gov agencies upon ticket purchase to some countries, or APIS data for a ticket assuming it incudes all segments not just the last flight to the US).

//on the flip side, people flying to the US from overseas in the next couple weeks could LOWER their risk of exposure from seatmates by doing the opposite: fly to a US entry point other than JFK/ORD/LAX/SFO/ATL

helvetic

Earlier thread here: Wuhan coronavirus outbreak — worries as it spread to HK & beyond

anacapamalibu

Xinhua news estimated 3 billion trips started Jan 10. The pots gonna be boiling soon.